


Love, What A Strange, New Thing

by Creativityx



Category: The Wilds (TV 2020)
Genre: F/F, Filling in the gaps of their relationship leading up to their confession of love, More of Toni's internalised self-worth doubts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-07
Updated: 2021-02-07
Packaged: 2021-03-12 09:07:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29257935
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Creativityx/pseuds/Creativityx
Summary: Toni hasn't remembered the last time she felt loved, was told she was loved or that the house she lived in was anything more than shelter. Family, love, what did those mean? It's through Regan and their confession of love that Toni starts to realise what those words mean.
Relationships: Regan/Toni Shalifoe
Comments: 13
Kudos: 7





	Love, What A Strange, New Thing

**Author's Note:**

> Wrote this on the wilds server, but throwing it here too, why not

She was talented, beautiful, but more than anything, Toni couldn’t deny how hard she started to fall when Regan would smile at her.

She thought that’s all it would be, Regan would always be over there, untouchable by someone like Toni, _someone as messy as her, she wasn’t worth loving, her parents made that much clear._

But, at the very least she would be able to see her and see her smile, even if it was at someone else.

_Martha breaks that distance._ Toni finds herself sitting across from the girl that had filled her mind in science class, Martha excusing herself from the class, a smug smile on her face as Regan takes her place.

Toni was scared that this was it, Regan would get to know her and wouldn’t smile, wouldn’t find her worth her attention. She couldn’t have been more wrong, _Regan laughs at her terrible jokes._

The next time they actually talk is when Toni is walking home. It’s the same as always, she didn’t really belong anywhere, step-by-step she walked on the side of the road towards that crappy foster house she’d be thrown into since the last one.

_You should be grateful,_ the woman at the foster care office hadn’t told her, _these people will give you a roof over your head. She couldn’t be less grateful._ It was miserable. They were expecting her happiness at being given the necessities. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been given to a family that made her feel loved.

So she kept walking, the longer it took, the longer she’d be away from it all, safer alone, more loved alone, _a family could just be her,_ why bother with anyone else.

She heard a car horn come from an old, slightly beaten up car behind her and prepared herself to make her trip home that much quicker. _Trust no one had become her lesson, a mantra, she is the only one that will keep her safe._

‘Hey! Hey! It’s me, Regan, we were in that science class a couple of days ago,’ comes from the car that pulls over into the dirt of the roadside. Regan winds down her window that much further after her shout, ‘You look like you could use a lift.’

Toni considered rejecting it, she didn’t want to be home sooner, enjoyed the moments where she could be a far away as possible from her ‘family’. Yet, the chance to spend more time with Regan had her reconsidering.

So she slings her bag off of her back, a cautionary smile making its way onto her face, ‘Yeah, I could, uh, use one.’

‘Perfect, hop in.’

The door creeks when she opens in, and slams loudly when she closes it, the sound somehow soothing when she knows that both of them resonate with the feeling of being close to Regan.

She buckles her seatbelt and settles in, Regan’s music filling the car as she offers directions towards her foster family’s house. _Not hers, she never wanted to call it hers._

She takes a breath, ‘So… what had you coming this way?’ Toni finds herself asking, fumbling with the seatbelt as she spoke.

‘I actually live this way, maybe a little further than your house, never seen you around here,’ Regan returns, tilting her head to glance at Toni briefly as she drove. ‘Though I also wanted to be all slick and impress you, but guess this car does the opposite of impressing girls.’

‘It’s, uh a nice car and well, not a huge fan of being here, so I’m away for most of the time,’ Toni admits, looking out of her window, away from the other girl. She couldn’t find the words to explain it clearer, to tell the girl she was really starting to actually like that she was just a foster kid.

Regan asks anyway, a small smile on her face, ‘I won’t pry, but why? I like going out but sometimes it’s just nice to be at home, just me and my sax.’

She bites her lip before turning to face her once more, ‘I guess you’d find out when you pulled in the driveway so, it’s not my home, not really, just another foster house like all the others.’

‘Foster?’ Regan asks. _Toni controls her anger,_ she hates when it gets brought up, hates when she’s the one that brings it up, _never wants someone to pry, to find out that outside of school she was just a lonely, angry kid stuck in a system that didn’t want her._

So she digs her nails into her car seat, takes a breath and hears the way her voice is an octave louder, a little sharper than she wanted it. ‘Yeah, my mum’s like in an out of rehab and my dad’s who knows where so they put me here and there and well its not some love fest that’s for sure.’

_Regan puts a hand on the one closest to her, gently pulling at it to get Toni to stop gripping onto the chair,_ ‘Any tighter and you might rip the upholstery,’ she starts. Toni doesn’t want pity, but can’t deny how much she was soothed by Regan holding her hand.

‘That came out wrong,’ Regan laughs awkwardly, still gripping at Toni’s hand, ‘I’m sorry it’s no love fest, I mean my family is rough but it’s my family,’ a pause, the girl’s hand gripping at Toni’s hand that much tighter, ‘But, we could hang out more, often and see how it goes to be away from family, just _us.’_

Toni loosens her grip on the chair, grasping Regan’s hand with both of her own, ‘Yeah, yeah I can do that.’

When they pull up to the house and one of her foster siblings throws something at Regan’s windscreen, her anger flares, she yells at the kid and Regan just offers her a smile.

_Toni knows she let her anger get out of control, doesn’t want to with her._ When she hops out of the car and shuts the door to go walk inside, she sees the slight indents on the passenger seat where she gripped it too tight and tries to remind herself what it means to be in _control._

Their relationship starts to grow from there. _Its always just the two of them spending time alone,_ Regan admitting that she didn’t want her parents to think of her less in the way they already thought of her brothers, _Toni afraid of losing another source of shelter if her foster house finds out_.

When they kiss for the first time it’s in a hallway, conversation flowing idly between them, _their family, the family they were starting to find with each other,_ Regan talking about all of the songs she could play on the sax and all the joke songs she had recorded and played at random in her house.

_Toni started to forget about all the things going wrong in her life,_ for once there was something going right.

Their dates are chosen at random, a movie here, a car ride there, but Toni’s favourite was just lying side-by-side in Regan’s room. _In her room, she could pretend she didn’t have anger that would flare at random, that her mother wasn’t a mess, that she wasn’t just another kid thrown through the foster system._

More than anything, she could try to ignore the fact that if she was removed from that foster house, she could be removed from Regan’s life. She tries to forget all of the times had been removed from those she cared about before.

A silence passes between them, both wrapped in one of Regan’s blankets, listening to music that they’d realised they both enjoyed, holding hands and forgetting the world.

‘Hey, Toni?’ Regan speaks, breaking their silence, _but never loudly,_ Regan offering something Toni had never really had, a calm sort of sound-making that ran through her existence.

‘Yeah?’ She offers, turning to face Regan.

The other girl takes a deep breath, drawing in that little bit closer, her lips almost touching Toni’s own, ‘ _I love you_.’

_Love? Regan loved her?_ When was the last time someone had told her she was loved? Toni couldn’t remember, maybe her mother, _maybe before she fell apart, she was a kid then,_ the feeling that came with those words long lost.

_Did she love Regan?_ The warmth she felt when she was in her arms, the clarity against her anger when Regan would hold her hand was new, _it_ _felt good._

‘I love you too,’ Toni whispers out after collecting all of her thoughts.

Regan answers Toni’s response by drawing the lips together and kissing her for as long as she could. _Yes, this was love, this is what it meant, must be what it means to finally have a family filled with love._


End file.
